Thomas Davidson (paleontologist)
Thomas Davidson (born May 17, 1817 in Edinburgh , † October 14, 1885 in Brighton ) was a Scottish paleontologist .
Life
Thomas Davidson was the son of well-to-do parents; they owned considerable estates in Midlothian . He received his education partly at the University of Edinburgh and partly in France , Italy and Switzerland . He developed an interest in natural history topics at an early age and benefited greatly from the experiences made during his upbringing when dealing with foreign languages, literature and scientists from foreign countries.
In 1837, under the influence of Leopold von Buch , he turned his interest to the group of brachiopods , for which over time he became the leading authority. The monograph Monograph of British Fossil Brachiopoda , published by the Palaeontographical Society , became his life's work. Between 1850 and 1886, six quarto volumes and appendices were published containing more than 200 plates lithographed by Davidson himself . He also wrote an extensive work on brachiopods living today. The book Recent brachiopods was of the Linnean Society published.
In 1857 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society , and in 1865 received the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London . In 1870 he was awarded the Royal Medal by the Royal Society , and in 1882 he was awarded a Legum Doctor (LL.D.) degree from the University of St. Andrews . Since 1880 he was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg and since 1862 a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .
Davidson died in Brighton on October 14, 1885, leaving his extensive collection of fossil and recent brachiopods to the British Museum .
A biography with a portrait and a catalog raisonné appeared in Geological Magazine for 1871, p. 145.
literature
- Davidson, Thomas . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 7 : Constantine Pavlovich - Demidov . London 1910, p. 864 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
Individual evidence
- ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Thomas Davidson. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 29, 2015 .
- ^ Member entry by Thomas Davidson (with a link to an obituary and a picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 23, 2017.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Davidson, Thomas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Scottish paleontologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 17, 1817 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Edinburgh |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 14, 1885 |
| Place of death | Brighton |